In Affidavit, Tenant Gives Information About Medication in D.C. Apartment
By Paul Duggan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 12, 2007
Even without his high heels, Dean Johnson was a towering fellow, a 6-foot-6 gay icon with a lean frame and shiny shaved head. A flamboyant rock singer, coffeehouse poet and paid escort, he was a celebrity among the drag queens and leathered denizens of Manhattan's boisterous downtown club scene -- a party promoter in a plus-size black cocktail dress and Carol Channing shades.
So in a way, friends said, it was fitting that in the end, he would not go quietly. Instead, three weeks after he died in an elegant Washington apartment building, Johnson, who was 45, remains at the center of an investigation that a D.C. police inspector called "a bit bizarre, to say the least."
On Sept. 20, when patrol officers answering a 911 call found him dead in an apartment at the historic Envoy building, at 2400 16th St. NW, Johnson was nude, "lying on a mattress on the floor in the living room area," according to a police affidavit filed in court. He had arrived in Washington from New York just hours earlier to visit for a few days with a recent acquaintance, 47-year-old Steven Saleh, in Apartment 227.
Turned out Johnson's body wasn't the only one in Saleh's living room that week.
Jordan "Jeremy" Conklin, 26, stood 6-foot-5, with a chiseled physique. A business graduate of Arizona State University, he was a gay man at loose ends, a friend said, bouncing from place to place, living with friends and working at low-paying jobs. After Conklin posted an ad on Craigslist, looking for temporary housing in Washington, he and Saleh began e-mailing last month, and Conklin moved into Apartment 227 on Sept. 14.
On Sept. 16, with Johnson still in New York, police responded to a 911 call and found Conklin "lying on the floor, on his back, in the living room area . . . with no signs of life," according to the affidavit, which was used to obtain a search warrant for Saleh's one-bedroom unit. "Both Mr. Saleh and the victim . . . are believed to have been involved in an alternative lifestyle."
Police said in a court document that in the search, they seized computer equipment, photographs, medications, clothing, paperwork, cellphones and other items.
Saleh, who has not been charged with a crime, issued a statement through his attorney yesterday, saying he was "shocked and saddened" by the deaths. He would not comment on specifics of the case. "He has provided the police with information that he hopes will help them determine how these men died," said the lawyer, Paul Kiyonaga, adding that his client extends "his prayers and deepest sympathies" to the men's families.
Two strangers, dead in the same room four days apart, their bodies showing no obvious signs of trauma. The circumstances "would make anyone's eyebrows go up," said Inspector Rodney Parks, head of the police department's violent-crimes branch. He said detectives, who are waiting for the D.C. medical examiner's office to perform toxicology tests on the bodies, have not determined whether crimes were committed.
Saleh, a former Commerce Department employee disabled by an illness that causes chronic severe pain and fatigue, told police Sept. 16 that Conklin "must have taken some pills" from Saleh's supply of medication, the affidavit said. Four days later, as Johnson lay dead in the apartment, the affidavit said, Saleh told police that he had given his visitor a prescription sleeping pill the night before.
"In the morning, when Mr. Saleh awoke, he claimed that he found the victim unconscious," a detective wrote in the affidavit, filed in D.C. Superior Court. "Mr. Saleh showed the officers a pill container in the kitchen, labeled 'Rozerem,' claiming that this was the medication which he gave to the decedent."
After Johnson's death, Saleh was taken to a police station for questioning, and during the ride, investigators said, he referred to his crippling disease.
"What is the media going to call me, the gimp black widow?" he wondered aloud, according to the affidavit. "I guess I won't have any more dinner parties."
While friends of the dead men await conclusive answers in the investigation, they spoke fondly of Johnson and Conklin in interviews, describing how each came to be staying in Apartment 227, where Saleh has lived for years.
Johnson, who was open about his on-and-off battles with substance abuse, was the frontman of the gay-themed rock band the Velvet Mafia and an earlier band called Dean and the Weenies. He enjoyed regaling acquaintances with tales of his sexual exploits as a gay escort, a vocation he took up after police raids drove him out of the business of promoting anything-goes sex parties on Manhattan's Lower East Side, friends said.
He gave public readings of his poetry and was a fixture, often in drag, at gay music revues in downtown clubs, some of which he helped organize. "Dean was celebrated in our community for his uniqueness, his boldness and his determination to stand up for his values," said another friend, known as Penny Arcade. "Dean was a real risk-taker."
In the escort business, which occasionally brought him to Washington, he took a lot of chances, friends said. A drag queen known as Lady Bunny, who was close to Johnson, said he was "so proud of the slogan he thought up," which ran with his profile on a Web site used to advertise gay escorts. "Money can't buy you love," it read, "but everything else is negotiable."
Another friend said Johnson told him in August about Saleh, with whom Johnson had recently become acquainted via the Web. The friend said Johnson showed him some of the e-mails he had received from Saleh, who was eager to see Johnson in person.
"Steve was very much looking forward to their meeting," said the friend, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "He thought Dean was this rare person who was not put off by his disability. He was already getting enamored of Dean from their phone calls and e-mails."
Johnson traveled to Washington in late August or early September and spent time with Saleh at the Envoy, according to the friend.
Saleh's attorney said it would be "inappropriate" for his client to comment on his relationship with either of the dead men or any e-mail correspondence he had with them.
After Johnson failed to return to New York, the friend said, he and another man were concerned about him and used Johnson's password to check his America Online e-mail inbox. They did not learn of his death until days afterward.
In the few weeks after Johnson's first visit to Saleh's apartment, the friend said, Saleh sent Johnson hundreds of e-mails in New York, often 20 or more a day. Saleh was greatly looking forward to Johnson's next visit, the friend said.
The friend declined to share copies of the e-mails but read parts of some of them over the phone.
On Sept. 14, the friend said, Saleh told Johnson that he had been experiencing episodes of pain that were more severe than usual, leaving him immobile at times, and that he had arranged for a young man to stay with him in the apartment temporarily to help him manage. The young man was to arrive soon.
Saleh was evidently referring to Conklin, who had worked during the summer as a nightclub bouncer in Provincetown, Mass., a predominantly gay resort community on Cape Cod. Conklin became romantically involved there with John Allen, 26, a waiter. Allen said in an interview that when he moved to Brooklyn, N.Y., at summer's end, Conklin joined him. But he did not get along with Allen's other roommates and stayed only briefly.
Erratic in his personal life, Conklin "had a way of thinking that wasn't always the clearest," Allen said. Why he decided to post a Craigslist ad seeking a place to stay in Washington "was something I didn't understand."
Conklin came by bus Sept. 14, arriving at the Envoy late at night. The friend said that the next day, Saleh told Johnson that Conklin was enjoying himself and that he had been drinking Saleh's rum. He also wrote that he was going to let Conklin send a message to Johnson.
Shortly afterward, the friend said, another e-mail arrived in Johnson's mailbox, apparently from Conklin, who introduced himself and said that he was delighted to be living with Saleh, that he had not felt this happy in a long time.
Hours later, on the 16th, after the police had come and gone, the friend said, Saleh urgently e-mailed Johnson to tell him that Conklin had died. In his reply, Johnson asked whether Saleh was joking, the friend said. But he was not.
The two then spoke by phone, according to the friend.
"The specific reason Dean went down to D.C. when he did is because this guy was freaked out and he wanted Dean to go down there and provide some comfort," the friend said. He said e-mails show that Saleh bought a roundtrip Amtrak ticket for Johnson on a train departing New York on Sept. 19. Johnson got to the Envoy early that evening.
The next morning, in Apartment 227, police officers with notebooks were standing over Johnson's body.
Staff writer Clarence Williams and staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.
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